Justin Blackman on "net neutrality":
Imagine
if hard drive providers had been so heavily regulated at the start of
the tech boom that only a few, government-approved companies were able
to bring their products to the marketplace. We would have never
witnessed the same rapid expansion of storage capacity over cost, as
there would have been far less incentive to innovate in such a stifling
market. Software, however, would have continued to advance in its own
relatively free domain, and would have very quickly run up against the
limitations imposed by artificial controls on storage media.
In
that environment, some software companies would start cutting deals with
hardware and OS platform providers. They might, for example, contract
that a certain amount of storage space always be dedicated to their
product in order to guarantee a certain level of performance for their
end users.
The government would then step in and tell these
companies that hard drive access must be totally equal, and that no
single company should be able to contract for any privileged access to
storage.
What consumer would want this situation at all? The free
hardware market is clearly far superior, because hard drive space is so
plentiful and expanding so rapidly that storage limitations are, at
worst, simply a matter of end user preference.
Now, imagine if
the telecom industry had not been so heavily regulated by government
that only a few, government-approved providers were able to bring
telecommunications to the marketplace.
Would we even be having this debate about net neutrality?
A damned good question.
